In a typical soft fruit harvesting machine, for example for black currants, the machine traverses a row of fruit bushes and has guides for deflecting the branches of the fruit bushes laterally outward into a picking zone where shakers shake the branches and cause the fruit to fall. A conveyor or other collecting means is arranged below the picking zone to collect the fruit. A conventional conveyor has to be set well to the side of the center of the bush so that there is space under the branches for the substantial depth of the conveyor. Thus fruit near the center of the bush after the deflecting (i.e. fruit which is down low) tends to fall to the ground clear of the conveyor. This problem is so severe with short young fruit bushes that the fruit has to be collected by hand.
A different type of machine is used for harvesting gooseberries, partly because gooseberry bushes tend to be a different shape and size from black currant bushes. A commercial gooseberry bush has a single vertical stem about 25 cm high and several branches extending out from the top of the stem. A suitable machine has a central picking zone and a single horizontal rotary shaker shaft. A large proportion of the fruit falls near the center of the bush where it can not be collected by a conventional conveyor.
It is a primary object of the invention to provide an improved harvester for soft fruit in which fruit near the center of a bush can be harvested by machine.
Other objects and advantages will become apparent from the following description of the invention.